Injectible Ivomec is thick and hard to draw up. If I know I'm going to use all of the contents of the bottle, I use a 16 gauge needle to draw it up; otherwise, I use an 18 gauge.
Ivomec can be given sub Q, which means under the skin. You can do this in one of two ways. You can pull up the skin into a tent and stick the needle into the wide space at the base of the "tent." Just make sure you don't stick the needle all the way through and squirt the medication out the other side.
The second way is to use a short needle and inject straight into the cow. Because the needle is short, the medication stays in the upper layer of tissue and is absorbed from there.
If you were giving an intramuscular (IM) injection, you would use a needle about an inch and a half long.
As to the gauge of needle to choose for actually giving the shot, I use an 18 gauge on cows and calves when injecting Ivomec. For bulls, I use a 16 gauge, as their hides tend to be pretty thick. An 18 gauge will work for bulls, though, if that's what you have.
I try to use the smallest gauge needle I can when giving injections to livestock. By that, I mean the smallest gauge that will do the job.
For young calves, I often use a 20 gauge needle and it works fine. So, an 18 gauge will do nearly every job, while a 16 gauge might be nice for only the toughest of hides.
As for length, a 1 1/4 or 1 1/2 inch needle is normally used for IM shots. One inch or less for SQ shots.
The standard needle I keep around is a box of 18 gauge, 1 1/2 inch needles. I can give about every kind of shot with that needle.
> We need to buy some needles to use
> to give our cows some Ivomic worm
> medicine. Is there a preferred or
> recommended size of needle to use,
> or guage of needle? Thanks.
